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A rapist was jailed for life at the Old Bailey today for attacking a pensioner - 16 years after escaping justice on a legal technicality.

But retribution came too late for
the victim, Hazel Backwell, who died “of a broken heart”, her son said today.

Wendell Baker had been brought
back to court under double jeopardy laws and found guilty thanks to evidence
from his now dead victim.

Hazel Backwell, then 66, had told
police in 1997 how her attacker had tied her wrists with the cable from her
portable radio before demanding cash and launching a violent sex attack.

Ms Backwell, a retired shorthand
typist and mother-of-one, died five years later in 2002.

Her only son David was in
court to hear that Baker – who refused to enter the dock to face his sentence –
must serve a minimum of 10 and a half years.

Judge Peter Rook QC said that Mrs
Backwell had felt “completely let down” by the law when Baker was formally
cleared on the judge’s direction at his first trial in 1999.

She went rapidly downhill as a
result of this blow.

Baker, now 56, would have remained
free but for the change in the double jeopardy law, introduced in 2005, which
reversed one of the central tenets of English law that a man cannot be
prosecuted for the same offence twice.

Outside court Mr Backwell said: “My mother sadly passed away lonely, with a broken heart and a
shadow of her former self and was never able to see the man who caused her so
much pain jailed for what he did.

“My mother felt as if she had been raped a second time when
Baker was first acquitted. She could not understand what had happened and was
left devastated. Baker was a free man and was allowed to continue with his life
as if nothing had ever happened.

“I am pleased with the sentence that has been handed down
today. It has taken a considerable length of time but the fact that we have
justice is far more important.

“My mother suffered and it saddens me that she is not here
to witness this momentous day. Instead I stand here on her behalf. Today is a
good day for our family but it will always be tinged with sadness. Justice has
been done.”

Baker had attacked Ms Backwell at her home in
Stratford in the early hours of January 1997.

The judge said: “She was raped in
her own bedroom at night. Up to then she had always felt safe and secure in her
home where she lived a quiet life.

“Baker targeted her because he had
somehow acquired inside knowledge and expected to find money.

“He was desperate for money and
when he found none he decided to punish her with a brutal and vicious attack
and rape.

“He threatened to kill her, she
suffered great pain then was locked in a cupboard for many hours with a flex
tied around her neck.

“She felt she was going to die and
she would have died but for the fact of a visit by a friend.

“She went through hours of torment.
She was black and blue, her face unrecognisable even to her son who only
recognised her by her voice.

“It ruined the last years of her
life and she became depressed and reclusive.”

The court heard that Baker, who
had a life time of petty crime, was at the time a crack cocaine addict.

Baker, of Walthamstow, was
convicted of rape by a jury in less than an hour of deliberations earlier this
week.

He had claimed the DNA samples had
been contaminated or that the match was a coincidence.